Independent journalism on fracking, onshore oil and gas and the reactions to it

Live updates: Wressle oil production decision – second hearing

Live updates from the second meeting to discuss Egdon’s application for 15 years of oil production at Lodge Farm, Broughton and Appleby, near Scunthorpe. The scheme includes the techniques of acidisation and proppant squeeze.

A previous meeting of North Lincolnshire Council’s planning committee on 11 January (see DrillOrDrop report) refused the application on the grounds that the officers report did not have enough information.

This time, as in January, planning officers have recommended approval of the scheme, which is virtually unchanged. Three councillors who expressed reservations about the application are members of the committee today.

The committee is also considering an application to extend the current planning permission for 12 months.

Variation of condition 24 – second application

Vote to refuse

3.40pm

5 councillors vote to refuse the application to extend the current application by 12 months. 4 vote to approve the application.

Vote to approve

3.35pm

4 councillors vote to approve the application to extend the current application by 12 months, 5 oppose.

Discussion on extending the current permission

Cllr Mick Grant

3.31pm

“I can see no reason to remove this site. I move the officers recommendation”

Ward councillor statement on extending current permission

Cllr Holly Mumby-Croft

3.30pm

“I can see no reason to extend this permission and I ask you to refuse this application”

Speakers for the application to extend the current permission

Paul Foster, Egdon planning consultant.

3.25pm

Mr Foster says the application is to increase the duration of the permission for a year.

The deadliine for the permission was April 2017, he says, and Egdon is seeking to extend this for another year. The company has appealed against the January 2017 refusal of permission for production and the outcome of that challenge is not expected until early 2018.

The application would allow the well site to stay in place for 12 months and allow Egdon to do groundwater monitoring. The application does not propose changes to the restoration scheme, Mr Foster says.

The principal of the well site is already established, Mr Foster says. Retaining the wellsite for a further 12 months would have no impact on environment, amenity or highway safety. It would ensure that the site would be restored in a reasonable time.

Speakers against the application to extend permission

Norman Hague speaking for Linda Beck

3.23pm

Mr Hague says Mrs Beck objects to the application because of its impact on the environment.

Committee chairman Cllr Sherwood interrupts Mr Hague to say he is speaking to the wrong application. Another opponent of the application is refused permission to speak because they are not on the chairman’s list.

Geraldine Clayton

3.18pm

The developers have already had three years to complete the work, Ms Clayton says. Drilling started in July 2014 and oil was identified. Testing in 2015 confirmed commercially-viable reserves. The site was described as a exploratory.

Ms Clayton says the planning authority has already issued enough time for work, originally scheduled to take 39 weeks. The company should not assume it would get an extended permission. This amounts to pre-determining the application to come, she says.

The original planning statement justified the scheme’s acceptability because it would have a temporary environmental impact, she says. The landscape impact would be limited to three years maximum and no further screening of the site was required.

“I hope the council will refuse the application. Egdon has had enough time to carry out the exploratory work.”

Dr Kate Simpson

3.13pm

Researcher, Dr Simpson, says:

“I oppose the application.The aim of the scheme is the long-term extraction of hydrocarbons and this will lead to increased CO2 emissions.”

Dr Simpson says the scheme contradicts local, national and international policies and plans.

“We have a global commitments to cut carbon emissions. To meet climate targets we must go beyond ‘business as usual'”.

Elizabeth Williams

3.10pm

Mrs Williams says she is overwhelmed by the committee’s vote

Mrs Williams says she has attempted to contact Egdon five times and had one response.

Most people in the area were unaware of what is planned because the company had said it was not proposing fracking. It is not high volume, she says, but it is high pressure and it is unusual fracking. She urges the committee to refuse the application

Vote for refusal of production

Seven of the 10 councillors vote to refuse. No hand count is made on councillors in favour of the application.

Discussion on production application

Cllr Haque Kataria

3.06pm

He says he is happier with the application than the previous one.

Cllr Ivan Glover

3.04pm

Cllr Glover (left) recommends refusal. The reasons for refusal have not changed from the previous meeting, he says.

Cllr Mick Grant

3.02pm

Cllr Grant (right) says the application is much better this time. But he says there’s not enough information to be confident that this is the right thing to do.

He says there’s a vast amount of information but this doesn’t help him.

“It clouds my mind. I will be proposing to refuse”.

Local ward councillor statements on application for oil production

Cllr Ivan Glover

3.01pm

He says he asked for the application to be discussed by the committee because he wanted to bring the issue into the public domain.

Cllr Holly Mumby-Croft

2.59pm

Cllr Mumby-Croft, who voted against the application at the previous meeting in January, says:

“I have not heard anything today that makes me change my mind”

She says she is concerned about the impermeable membrane and gas production from the site. She says she is amazed that Egdon would come to the committee with no details of where the water is coming from.

She asks the committee to refuse the application.

Speakers in favour of the application for oil production

Paul Foster, planning consultant

2.50pm

Paul Foster outlines the measures that the company would take to prevent threats to surface water or soils. He says an impermeable membrane is a key way to prevent leaks. The membrane will be repeatedly tested, he says, to ensure it will not leak. Surface water will be tested throughout the project and the results reported to the Environment Agency.

He says under the aquifer there is an impermeable 240m thick rock layer which prevents vertical movement between the oil reservoir and the groundwater aquifers. There is negligible risk to groundwater, he says. Four groundwater boreholes will be used to monitor any impact on groundwater.

Egdon recognises the importance of British Steel’s water abstraction boreholes. There was no impact on them during drilling and testing at Wressle. Egdon met with representatives of British Steel, which had objected when the application was first discussed last year. Egdon has demonstrated there would be no impact on the water quality or volume for British Steel, Mr Foster says. British Steel has withdrawn its objection.

On air quality, Mr Foster says neither flaring or dust would have a “significant impact”.

The proposal involves conventional oil production, with negligible environmental impact, he says. There would be a negligible risk to ground or surface water. There would be rigorous oversight from the minerals authority, Environment Agency and other regulators.

The proppant squeeze and the acidisation would be carried out only once, he says. The award of an environmental permit proves the application could be carried out safely. The application meets national and local planning policy, he says.

Jonathan Foster, planning and safety consultant

2.43pm

Jonathan Foster says there is a robust regulatory regime for the onshore oil and gas industry.

He says the Environment Agency has approved the proposed activities at the site by granting a new permit. The acidisation is classified by the EA as de-minimis [having no significance] for groundwater, he says.

Proppant squeeze could lead to indirect or direct risks to groundwater, according to the EA, Mr Foster says. But he says the process would be carried out in rocks where no groundwater is present. The fluids used in the proppant squeeze have been approved as non-hazardous to groundwater, Mr Foster adds.

He says the Health and Safety Executive regulates the integrity of the well. He cites a regulation which, he says, reduces risk to the environment to “as low as possible.” The construction of the well is key to preventing damage to the environment, he adds.

Mr Foster rejects suggestions that Egdon is proposing to carry out an unusual form of fracking or a process that is novel in the industry.

“It is not an experiment. The application proposes standard industry practices, including acidisation and proppant squeeze, which have been carried out across the UK without risk. It is not unfamiliar to those tasked with regulating it or receiving the waste.”

Mr Foster says the committee should assume that other regulators will do their jobs properly.

Mark Abbott, Managing Director of Egdon

2.38pm

Mr Abbott says acidisation and proppant squeeze will be used to improve flow in the well.

Acidisation will be undertaken first to unblock perforations in the well. The acid will move 6-8m from the well. If needed, the proppant squeeze will then be carried out. Both will be undertaken only once. If they don’t work, a side-track will be drilled.

In acidisation, Mr Abbott says, hydrofluoric acid will be formed inside the well and will not be transported to the site. The mix will not be pumped into the formation at pressures to cause the rocks to fracture. It is matrix acidising, not acid fracking, he says. Once the treatment has been carried out there will be no acid on the site.

Mr Abbott says proppant squeeze is smaller in scale than fracking and for a different purpose. It has been carried out across the UK, including at Crosby Warren, he says. It takes two days, and uses less water than fracking. The fluid will reach up to 20m from the well. The fluid is not hazardous to groundwater and the Environment Agency would not issue a permit if there were a threat to groundwater. The process would be used a mile underground.

“We are confident there is no risk to shallow groundwater”

Paul Foster, planning consultant

2.34

Paul Foster, a planning consultant at Barton Willmore, thanks the officers for their report, which recommends approval of the application.

He says the Wressle plan has been granted an environmental permit.

The well was drilled in 2014 and tested in 2015. There were no complaints to the company or the council during these operations, he says. 2.14 million barrels of oil are potentially recoverable from Wressle, he says.

We all need oil and gas, he says, for feedstocks and fuel. It is far better to produce this domestically than import it. We need to maximise all our domestic energy sources. He says:

“Egdon is seeking to produce oil conventionally. There is no intention to undertake high volume hydraulic fracturing. There is no potential for shale gas at Wressle.

“The prime target is oil. Any gas produced will be used to provide energy at the site.”

Speakers opposing the production application

Jean Turner

2.28pm

Ms Turner says there are unacceptable risks because of earthquakes in the area, which number up to two a month.

A large gas pipe runs the route that the lorries will take, she says. There are bends on the road where the lorries cannot see each other.

Air pollution caused 40,000 deaths in the UK last year, Ms Turner says. New research from the University of Edinburgh among others proves that particulates rapidly travel from the lungs into the bloodstream and then into the liver.

Chemicals and particulates, particularly from flaring 10 tonnes of gas a day, will travel sideways in the atmosphere to a larger area than just Scunthorpe and Brigg, she says.

“It will be very costly to the health services.”

The chemicals that will be used to create hydrofluoric acid will be carried on the road. This will be a first in the UK. There must be no loopholes. This acid will extract radioactive material from the well, she says.

Recent TV coverage prove the lack of due diligence by local authorities which will prove very costly. She adds of the application:

“No guarantee of where the oil is going. No bond to protect anyone of us. The taxpayer will fund any damage.”

Elizabeth Williams, Frack Free Lincolnshire

2.23pm

Elizabeth Williams tells the committee:

“We cannot allow an experimental form of fracking”.

She says Egdon is proposing an unusual form of low volume, high pressure fracking into sandstone. But it doesn’t have to be called fracking because it is not into shale and is not high volume.

She says researchers have defined the proposed process as unconventional and as a form of fracking.

Pressure would be 5,000 pounds per square inch and would applied to a 2.5km deviated well a mile underground. There would be an array of hazardous chemicals, including hydrofluoric acid for the acidisation, to stimulate poor flow. Mrs Williams says:

“This is a novel process onshore”

“There is an unacceptable impact on the environment and health of people in the local area. It conflicts with North Lincolnshire Council’s priorities.”

Egdon’s desk top studies are “very flimsy” when it comes to assessing risk, Mrs Williams says. When there are such concerns, we should take the precautionary principle for local residents and the commitments to climate change. She asks the committee:

“Please take the precautionary principle. Please observe your duty of care and refuse this application.”

Martin Foster, Unite trades union

2.17pm

Mr Foster, a British Steel union representative, opposes the application. He says the promise to stop operations in the event of seismic activity may not stop damage to the British Steel water supply borehole.

He says he has talked to Egdon representatives and he is pleased that groundwater will be monitored. But he says by the time the results of monitoring are known the damage would have been done. Monitoring is reactive, he says.

Mr Foster says Egdon has already drilled through a fault. The fault was responsible for a 5-magnitude earthquake at Market Rasen. He questions the life and durability of the impermeable membrane. He adds:

“We should be encouraging green energy alternatives to the search for more fossil fuels”.

Geraldine Clayton

2.12pm

Ms Clayton says the cutting of red tape in the onshore oil and gas industry has allowed companies to self-monitor. They can choose which figures to submit to the regulators. In effect, they are marking their own homework, she says.

There are only four monitoring boreholes for this site, she says. She asks how the application can be approved if no waste treatment facility are earmarked. There are none that are capable of dealing with such toxic and radioactive material, she says.

The application is for 15 years but the world will look very different in that time. She refers to clean energy developments in the area, along with energy connectors to European countries and local small-scale generating schemes. London has more vehicle charging points than filling stations, Ms Clayton adds.

There are still estimated 200bn barrels in the North Sea if we want a bridge to a clean energy future, Ms Clayton says. But the government is penalising other energy forms in favour of the “accident prone” onshore industry.

Andrew McLeod

2.08pm

Resident Andrew McLeod said many issues that concern objectors to the application are not addressed in the officers’ report. He says a report on unconventional oil and gas operations by the Natural Environmental Research Council called for more research because of, among other issues, a “poor understanding” of the migration of fluids sub-surface. This needs to be assessed and monitoring needs to be refined, the report concludes.

Mr McLeod there is a “deeply troubling list of known unknowns”. He says Egdon’s proposed monitoring is inadequate. He says assurances of safety should be treated with “extreme caution” and the application should be refused.

He says there is a lack of information about the deviated well and its relationship with the principal aquifer. Without this, the risk cannot properly be assessed.

There is no provision for monitoring the principal aquifer and the monitoring proposals are inadequate, he says.

“This is a risky experiment that could damage the environment.

“Please reject this application and let scientists conduct this experiment, not Egdon”.

Planning officer update

2.05pm

20 further letters of objection received since the officers’ report had been published. These include the following issues: No confidence in regulatory control, potential contamination of aquifer and concern about continued use of fossil fuels

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I don’t think it is so much drilling for oil because if we buy it from abroad the CO2 emmissions will be the same for the oil itself, albeit lower from the UK the UK because there will not be the case of the giant oil tankers buring upto 300 tons of crude per day, just to get their load to these shores

Oil and gas wont stay in this country, it will be mostly sold abroad in the more lucrative foreign market, A little will get sold in UK, but not cheaply, the monopolies will see to that, it will get taxed to the hilt, the existing overseas agreements to bolster up the post brexit overseas trade will still exist and even be more prolific with brexit isolation from the single market. And of course all using those big tankers is simply exporting CO2 abroad, no change at all, plus the greater availability of oil and gas will pee off the saudis and they will continue their embargos and make it all much too lucrative to remain on UK shores. Its all a joke really, the revenue will end up in off shore tax havens as it does now, no change, no benefit and our country will be ruined ransacked and vast areas privatised under a police state ready for further exploitation such as nuclear and toxic waste dumping, and all for corporate profit and greed, the tax payer wont see a penny of it..
Better to stop it now and let them go away and fight over another strategic airstrip one.

Like so many anti everything Phil, philosophy is not fact what may happen is not fact, unless it does. Where a company keep its money is of no interest provided they have paid their taxes . [Edited by moderator] Don’t forget that these people who you believe are out to do you harm by dumping toxic waste, etc, they have families and grandchildren and parents living here . The tax payer, by the way, tends to make a good deal of money from this. As you may have noticed too the price of oil has gone down, and if you run a car, you will find that it costs up to £30 less to run every month. This is entirely down to Shale exploitation in America, which used to import 25% of all of the oil available for sale in the whole world. Now they are even exporting Shale gas and oil. The result there has been a glut and the greedy Arabs are facing reality… You have benefited enormously from these events. Don’t believe the rubbish often quoted in here. Nobody has died from fracking even though 2,000,000 wells have been fracked and a few of them in the UK too. Methane is ever present in the atmosphere and bleeds out of swamps all over the world and is called Marsh Gas. Methane is not toxic to humans unless you turn it on in a enclosed space where it may force the normal air out and you would die of suffocation. The world is currently warming up after the last ice age, it does this in cycles and in the past 750,000 years the UK has suffered 4 ice ages, some lasting more than 100,000 years. So there is no such thing as an optimum temperature on earth, it just depends where you are in the cycle !

[Edited by moderator]
Tax havens, do you know why tax havens are so frowned upon, even in government? Because they exist to avoid tax in the country that they operate in, like UK. Profits are cleverly sent to tax haven fake companies and managed through multiple deviations to achieve minimum tax benefit to the host countries tax collector, the UK. And hence is not a benefit to the tax payer, rather more a net drain and a fraud.
Next: My car runs on petrol, I know its called gas elsewhere, but fracking is primarily for gas, and petrol is a crude oil cracking product and used to be waste and thrown away, until cars came along, and they were electrically powered originally, that was quickly squashed and petrol and diesel became no longer a waste product. There are some oil wells, but not, if you believe the spin, by fracking, but by proppant squeeze and acidisation. Unproven experiments. So no cigar there either.
This is interesting terminology “no one has died from fracking”??
Really? No industrial accidents? No pollution? No non disclosure agreements or no compensation for poisoned water, no bullying of medical facilities to prevent any results of health damage and deaths from being laid at the door of the fracking industry? You are either totally brainwashed or you know the truth and want to hide it.
Next: I believe its 2.7 million fracking wells in USA and rising, marsh gas, as you call it originates from rotting vegetation in swamp areas, ask any swampy? What is so inefficiently hydraulically unconventionally pressure fracked out of the ground, less than 40% of it, is trapped hydrocarbons from the carboniferous dating back 500 million years or so, it stopped becoming marsh gas a few centuries after. It is not just methane though is it? An entire cleaning process has to be employed to clean all the impurities out and boost its calorific value to where it can be used.
You cannot see or smell methane and its associated impurities, that is why mercaptan is added. Yes it is poisonous, people get shortness of breath and severe fatigue, bleed from every orifice, get unheal able welts and painful skin lesions, the old and young are particularly susceptible. Animal deaths are common. So we can throw away that claim too.
Yes the earth is recovering from a cyclic ice age, but we have screwed up all the earths natural safety valves of heat and carbon sinks to such an extent, that the earths present cycle, far from being naturally smothed out and minimised by the natural heat and carbon sinks, it has rapidly collapsed into a wildly fluctuating volatility that all the elements of absorption are compromised. The last such rapid deterioration was the great permian extinction where 90% of all life on the planet died out. This is no longer a natural cycle and it is our fault, we have royally screwed up the climate and it was completely unnecessary, Tesla showed the way more than 100 years ago, but that wasn’t suitable for the profiteers and they squashed and hid the incredible practically free energy generation he offered, all for a miserable profit for the few at the expense of the many. A total and utter fraud that we are now paying for big time, and now all the ecological chickens are coming home to roost.
That, is where we are in our self inflicted anthropogenic ruinously destructive cycle.

Full of conspiracy theories, and so many people wishing you harm or tricking you with their tax returns it is a wonder that you dare to get out of bed in the morning (My car by the way runs on LPG, far less polluting than petrol). Once again you make a lot of allegations but produce no proof just a series of allegations. if you wish to be taken seriously I suggest that you produce facts, and not minor events. Any industrial activity always has a risk and sometimes people die, in this case drill pipes dropping on their heads. In America 800,000 wells have been fracked and yet, despite warnings by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, the Americans remain extremely healthy. I would suggest that far more people have died as a result of the motor car, so are you agitating to ban motor vehicle. If not, then why centre on the, by comparison, relatively harmless activity of fracking.
Regardless of what man kind can do the world will warm up and the sea levels will rise. Great Britain has mostly been under the sea several times in its evolution. But, think it through, not blindly follow the latest buzz words. As the planet warms up, so will huge areas of the world become able to support plant life, where it has been too cold before. Plants require CO2 to produce sugars, and CO2 extracted from the atmosphere leads to global cooling, which is probably what has happened all along. So not only thousands upon thousands of square miles of new plant life, but the existing plant life will also thrive somewhat better. In other aspects, there has been some research, of late, that suggests that the sun itself cycles . The final bit of news for the UK is that the Northern East end of the European Plate is being forced Northeast. The UK and Scandinavia are being forced North and in a few million years will be almost certainly be up above where Moscow is today. Not only that but as history presents, one day another giant asteroid will collide with the Earth.

What is the optimum climate then ? Last year ago, 10 years ago, 100,000 years ago

But, the world is gradually turning to renewables . If Greenpeace were serious they would work with the Government to siphon off some of the profits from Shale and invest them in renewables and in the space of 40 years, or so, the whole country could be converted to renewable energy and cease to carry out demonstrations all over the country, which are ineffective and cost us money, and serve to denote Greenpeace as a rabble. When I once put this suggestion to Greenpeace; they replied ‘ We always demonstrate’. So there you have it, just another ‘Look Mum I’m on telly’ brigade …. But, funnily their membership usually mature and eventually become good citizens with two kids and leave their house at precise 8am each each day to go to work

[Edited by moderator] Lets get down to some of these unattributed unfounded fact free accusations you make and see where we can take that shall we?
The more i read of your words the funnier they get, but i will try to keep from laughing and wade them through.

“Nobody has died from fracking even though 2,000,000 wells have been fracked and a few of them in the UK too. and yet, despite warnings by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, the Americans remain extremely healthy.” ??

“America 800,000 wells have been fracked” ??

OK, i give up, which is it? The figure i see is 2.7+ million in USA, you come up with two different figures in two posts? which is it? Maybe your program needs updating?

Americans remain perfectly healthy? You serious?? Have you seen any Americans recently? Not only grossly unhealthy as all get out, but seriously unstable and volatile too?
What about non disclosure agreements or health issues that won’t be dealt with by personal health insurance if it is laid at the door of the o$£&g litigious industry? Poisoned wells and water courses, frack workers and local residents with severe long term life threatening health problems as a result of exposure to fracking chemicals and gas? Look it up for yourself if you want to, there is plenty of evidence out there that an enquiring mind can discover? Those the facts you want? Educate yourself. Knock yourself out!

“I would suggest that far more people have died as a result of the motor car, so are you agitating to ban motor vehicle. If not, then why centre on the, by comparison, relatively harmless activity of fracking.”

The subject old thing is not car accidents at all, is it? Look at the heading page: “Live updates: Wressle oil production decision – second hearing”?
The subject you may not have noted, is oil production, not car accidents, another example of diversion tactics, you might have well mentioned war and starvation, or cancer or old age, or working in a dangerous industry, but irrelevant to the question. Off subject, therefore just a weak diversion

Agitation? Just correcting your error or perhaps you call that agitation? Funnier and funnier, this is just a weak attempt to cover up your mistake from the previous post, which was:
“Nobody has died from fracking even though 2,000,000….”

Relatively harmless activity of fracking”??
Yeah, right, all sweetness and light isn’t it? And all the disobeyed and patently ignored rules and regulations are only there for fun? Don’t need to take any notice of that if the government sanction anything and everything you do legal or illegal and run rough shod over protesters and democracy to do it, is there? Even the ones the frackers actually obey, which is about 0.1% as far as present practice reveals.

“Plants require CO2 to produce sugars, and CO2 extracted from the atmosphere leads to global cooling, which is probably what has happened all along. So not only thousands upon thousands of square miles of new plant life, but the existing plant life will also thrive somewhat better”

Now this bit is what really made me laugh, because it is so outrageous, its a parody of itself, and so patently not true it beggars belief that anyone but Trump could fall for it!.
My dear Vernon [edited by moderator] Plants require water, soil and sunlight, they actually breath out CO2, plants can synthesise all the sugars and from the CO2 they separate out of the atmosphere.
CO2 and methane are greenhouse gasses, methane is 80 times worse than CO2 but few figures exist as to how long it remains in the atmosphere. both interfere with the ozone layer, notice the sun is very hot at the moment? Many times hotter than usual, have you seen the melted bin covers and frying eggs on the bonnets of cars?
Why is that? Yes there are solar cycles, but something else is going on as well, the earth has a natural shield against radiation from the sun, its why life exists at all on the surface of this planet. the problem at the moment is, as i said before, we have destroyed, and are still planning to destroy even more, of the earths remaining defences against all the effects of solar, and earth cycles, but we have screwed up big time by refusing to repair such damage and adding to the earth’s defences.

Plant life will do no such thing! Depletion of the ozone layer and poisoning the water, land and air, will not produce thousands upon thousands of square miles of new plant life, and neither will the existing plant life will also thrive somewhat better? Pure balderdash, plants are getting burned from the UVC radiation reaching the ground, and even road signs are fading, they have never done that before.
What you say is not even pseudo science, its just fantasy to bolster up the knowledge of CO2 pollution and to try to give it a positive spin! Absolute rubbish!

Reality does not conform to such narrow little speculations, the ecology is highly complex and relies on many natural cycles we still don’t understand, but reimagining CO2 as some sort of planetary benefit, is just bizarre?

Then you go off into some odd direction trying to blame tectonic drift and asteroids?
And you accuse me of conspiracy theory? Ooops!

The lesson of all this is that living on the surface of earth can damage your health, the moral of it, is don’t screw it up and make it even more dangerous. Like fracking for example.

There is no continuous climate on the surface, but what was here, and kept the system relatively stable, was natural carbon and heat sink absorption which would have smoothed out this present major fluctuation, and guess who screwed that up? And are still doing so, and by all accounts your industry, will be doing even more screwing up (or down) of the few carbon and heat sinks that remain?

And then you want us to be convinced that fracking is harmless???

Not a chance buddy, we either change direction and do so now, or we suffer the consequences, so some of us object and say so. [Edited by moderator]

You don’t seem very well informed Vernon. I quite like your rose tinted belief system and to be sure there are plenty of zombie subscribers to those fallacies, but unfortunately just believing some things to be true (your truth) doesn’t make them true.

No I only deal in facts unlike your own presentation which is full of philosophy and dark persecution by the financially better off. Also apparently massive groundwater contamination. What you have alluded to is statistically invisible . Yes I am quite well informed, and I make it my business to delve into some of the wilder statements. Thus, inflamable water , remember it, apparently it was a farm yard well which had penetrated a gas layer. Years ago ! In Germany the same has happened more recently when a well there penetrated a gas pocket. Flu like symptoms and cattle dead in fields, another wild story put about by the Greens. What poppycock, if that were so, it would be noticeable in areas where swamp gas emerges quite naturally. What is sad is that people usually the young believe this rubbish, whereas – in fact, the environmental movement is against burning of fossil fuels and they have been busy inventing stories to scare the public . Fracking causes earthquakes. A few minor tremors maybe, but not full scale earthquakes. So far there has been no proof of fracking causing earth tremors in the UK, yet another green lie. Caudrilla said that ‘they probably caused the two small earth tremors’ … Probably is not a fact and the UK suffers some 300 minor earth tremors every year. Dirty water, the result of chemicals being used in fracking is another scare story. Some wells are fracked – these days using either frozen methane, or frozen nitrogen instead of water . The gas is recoverable and re-useable or, in the case of methane sold on as fuel. Gas, of course brings no chemicals back to the surface, including irradiated solids.
[Edited by moderator]

Laughable. The very first serious attempt at fracking in the UK caused a bad tremor that damaged the well casing. Alberta holds the record for frack induced quakes at 4.8 and Oklahoma is now the man made quake capital of the US, rivalling California’s natural ones.
Even a tiny bit of homework shows that natural gas comes out of the ground mixed with several vapors and contaminants which need to be condensed an cleaned out before its fit for the grid. You couldn’t make this stuff up! Oh sorry, you can, and you did.

[Edited by moderator] Have you absolute proof that the quake in Oklahoma was caused by fracking, or was it co-incidental ? Does it automatically mean that this would be repeated in the UK, and what of the other 800,000 wells fracked and the 2,000,000 worldwide. So even if a quake can be attributed in Oklahoma, it is a very low statistic indeed. Indeed your whole argument seems to be by rote. I would hazard a guess that you are either the owner or the administration of Drill or Drop . I note even your photos from North Lincs are misleading about acid. Well when it is used it expends its properties in the presence of alkaline and ends up as water, so yet another lie perpetrated by Drill and Drop ! [Edited by moderator]

[Moderator’s note: DrillOrDrop only contributes comments under the author’s or moderator’s names. We have no need to pretend to be anyone else.]

‘the quake in Oklahoma’ LOL … there have been thousands. [Edited by moderator] Their quakes are mostly due to wastewater injection btw – a downstream artifact of Oil andGas hydraulic fracturing. Good luck with your beliefs – may they bring you peace.

[Edited by moderator] How many earth tremors does the USA experience per year ? In the UK it is about 300. All things being equal then in the USA there must be literally thousands of tremors per year. It would be very difficult, indeed, to say with absolute certainty that any were caused by fracking. Moreover, what has been the result of those tremors. The two that happened in England and were, or were not, erroneously attributed to fracking, have been likened to a heavy lorry passing a house. Hardly an international event, indeed, several such lorries pass my house every day. [Edited by moderator]

Never mind….Vernon [edited by moderator] enjoy the sunshine, the clean air, clean water and unpolluted countryside for while. Then go back and consider deeply, just what it is you will be doing to all that?

Ask your children one day, if or when you have some, just what it is that makes them so happy running around laughing and playing in the clean air, drinking clean water, and eating clean food, and would they like their children to be able to do the same?

Is the answer fracking? Or doing some really intelligent energy generation and use, and by doing that, keeping the countryside clean and healthy for future generations?

Yes Phil, Please read it again 2,000,000 (that is two million) wells have been fracked over the past 15 – 20 years in America and no there has been no poisoned water . As I have have said elsewhere the only deaths, if any, have been the result of industrial accidents associated with the activity of fracking. Like so many antis you have lots of philosophy and no facts, but create and expound your views as if they were facts. As for children, well I would hope that as time goes by, when we are technically able, we will progress away from the use of fossil fuels, although that will not stop global warming. Global warming is also a natural effect. Agains as said before ‘there is no such thing as an optimum climate’ on Earth, there never has been and optimum climate and there will never be . But, in passing which climate would you like the world to be pegged to 400,000,000 years ago. 40, 000,000 age, when you were a child, last year, last week ? I am afraid that any that you may wish it to be pegged to will undoubtedly upset many peoples of the world, because they are used it being something else